City officials look to UIndy: ‘This is the future’
Joining in today’s groundbreaking ceremony were (from left) Kory Vitangeli, Vice President and Dean of Students; Adam Thies, director of the Department of Metropolitan Development; Mike Watkins of the UIndy Board of Trustees; UIndy President Robert Manuel; Gene Zink, chairman and CEO of Strategic Capital Partners; and Jason Dudich, chief of staff for Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard.
Greyhound Village project hailed as model for urban development
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City officials and construction and development executives joined the UIndy community Thursday to celebrate the start of the Greyhound Village apartments project, which not only will house 480 upperclassmen and graduate students but also is intended to fuel the revitalization of the surrounding neighborhood.
The four-story, 196-unit building will boost the university’s residential capacity by 30 percent when it opens in Summer 2016, replacing the 1950s-era Campus Apartments at Shelby Street and National Avenue.
But the project represents much more, as noted during the groundbreaking ceremony by Jason Dudich, chief of staff for Mayor Greg Ballard, and Adam Thies, director of the city-county Department of Metropolitan Development. They praised UIndy’s role as a community anchor, collaborating with city government and private developers to bring attractive new housing to the Shelby Street corridor.
Shelby Street connects the campus to the nearby Garfield Park and Fountain Square neighborhoods and also is the anticipated route of the city’s first bus rapid transit line, which could be operating as soon as 2018. By increasing UIndy’s residential capacity more than 30 percent, the apartments will help build the density needed to attract new merchants and development to the area.
“People come up and ask me all the time: ‘What’s the future hold for this city?’” Thies said. “The future is anchor institutions (and) dense development, connected by transportation options that don’t exist today. … So this is the future. I could go through all the wonderful things about what President Manuel and his team have done here. They are the model of what anchor institutions mean. They are the model of what the future will hold for our city.”
Read more about Greyhound Village here.
The campus community and former residents were invited to write their farewells on the walls of the 1950s-era Campus Apartments, soon to be demolished to make way for the new Greyhound Village at Shelby Street and National Avenue.